A Place to Stand

Comments from Scotland on politics, technology & all related matters (ie everything)/"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."Henry Louis Mencken....WARNING - THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS HAVE DECIDED THAT THIS BLOG IS LIKELY TO BE MISTAKEN FOR AN OFFICIAL PARTY SITE (no really, unanimous decision) I PROMISE IT ISN'T SO ENTER FREELY & OF YOUR OWN WILL

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Another Scotsman letter, indeed this one is the lead letter of the day. Not bad considering I had the Lords reform one on Tuesday. Very minor editing, some grammatical which I have accepted and some removing more controversial parts which I have kept in and highlighted.

We are back in recession, officially. The Treasury is briefing that it is because of the EU, to which 40% of our exports go because it is barely growing. They don't mention that the rest of the world - which takes the other 60% - are growing at an average of 6%. Indeed despite all the blame that was formerly placed on the "world recession" the world economy has been growing consistently at 5% overall since the alleged "world recession" started.

Even the politicians, approved pundits and civil servants dare not dispute that it would be perfectly easy to get out of recession and into at least world average growth any time they actually wanted to. All that is needed is for politicians to get out of the way and let the free market operate. 93% of electricity prices are political parasitism. 75% of the cost of housing is political. Since regulators increase business costs by 20 times their own earnings government inspectors are robbing us of the productive labour of more than 4 million workers.

No politician dares to dispute the self evident fact we would be out of recession in days if they would allow it. When pressed they simply refuse to answer or change the subject and fortunately for them any such questioning is avoided by the mainstream media.

Adam Smith said "Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: All the rest being brought about by the natural course of things."

The corollary is that nothing else is required to ruin a country than politicians who insist on controlling everything and ensuring that no competent and free economic decisions can be made.

Again it went out to all and sundry and again it appears to have been used only by the Scotsman.

This is a much simplified version of my multi-point programme into fast growth which, so far, no newspaper, politician in power or professional economist has been willing to comment on, though Brian Monteith thought it worthy of his website. One may take this as proof that it is so obviously wrong that nobody feels the need to even say why, or that it is so obviously right that nobody committed to our political nomenklatura, can think of any way in which it can be seriously disputed. It can't be anything in between.

I would like to see this actually publicly discussed elsewhere. Considering the Cameronians have promised a "forensic, relentless focus on growth is what you will get from this government" and it is quite obvious that, by that measure, they have achieved less than nothing one should expect them to be looking for ideas. Well if one trusted a word Cameron said one would.

I have a few more ideas for the programme and will update it soon. We could indeed be out of recession in days.

Friday, April 27, 2012

The Euro/;American "International Criminal Court" has found Charles Taylor guilty of interfering in Liberia's neighbour Sierra Leone by supporting one side in its dreadful civil war.

I am not going to say he was on the side of the good guys here because looking at that pointless 11 year gangsterism there doesn't seem to be antibody worth of that description. The closest is the Kamajors, a local militia who developed to defend villagers against both "soldiers" and "rebels" (sobels as they were called). Their leader failed to get on the "democratic" side fast enough and was also indicted by the Europeans,

During the first year of the war, the RUF took control of large swathes of territory in eastern and southern Sierra Leone...precipitated a military coup d'état in April 1992 by the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC).[2] By the end of 1993, the Sierra Leone Army (SLA) had succeeded in pushing the RUF rebels back to the Liberian border, but the RUF recovered and fighting continued. In March 1995, Executive Outcomes (EO), a South Africa-based private military company, was hired to repel the RUF. ...Under UN pressure, the government terminated its contract with EO before the accord could be implemented, and hostilities recommenced. In May 1997 a group of disgruntled SLA officers staged a coup and established the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) as the new government of Sierra Leone.[5] The RUF joined with the AFRC to capture Freetown with little resistance. The new government, led by Johnny Paul Koroma, declared the war officially over. A wave of looting, rape, and murder followed the announcement.[6] Reflecting international dismay at the overturning of the civilian government, ECOMOG forces intervened and retook Freetown on behalf of the government, but they found the outlying regions more difficult to pacify.....The Lome Peace Accord, signed on 27 March 1999, was the result. Lome gave Foday Sankoh, the commander of the RUF, the vice presidency and control of Sierra Leone's diamond mines in return for a cessation of the fighting and the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force to monitor the disarmament process. RUF compliance with the disarmament process was inconsistent and sluggish, and by May 2000, the rebels were advancing again upon Freetown. The British intervened to save the failing UN mission and the weak government of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. With help from a renewed UN mandate and Guinean air support, the British Operation Palliser finally defeated the RUF. On 18 January 2002, President Kabbah declared the Sierra Leone Civil War officially over.....Russian businessman Viktor Bout, who enjoys protection of the Russian state, supplied Charles Taylor with arms for use in Sierra Leone and had meetings with him about the operations. Charles Taylor worked for The United States' CIA, beginning in 1980s. The exact nature of this relationship is uncertain.....The initial rebellion could have easily been quelled in the first half of 1991. But the RUF – despite being both numerically inferior and extremely brutal against civilians – controlled two-thirds of Sierra Leone by the year’s end. The SLA’s equally poor behavior made this outcome possible....many SLA soldiers discovered that they could do better by joining with the rebels in looting civilians in the countryside instead of fighting against them.[6] The local civilians referred to these soldiers as ‘sobels’ or ‘soldiers by day, rebels by night’ because of their close ties to the RUF....A grassroots militia force, the Kamajors operated invisibly in familiar territory and was a significant impediment to marauding government and RUF troops.[41] For displaced and unprotected Sierra Leonans, joining the Kamajors was a means of taking up arms to defend family and home due to the SLA’s perceived incompetence and active collusion with the rebel enemy. The Kamajors clashed with both government and RUF forces.....with the RUF within twenty miles of Freetown, Executive Outcomes, a paramilitary group from South Africa, arrived in Sierra Leone. For $1.8 million per month (financed primarily by the International Monetary Fund), ....In just ten days of fighting, EO was able to drive the RUF forces back sixty miles into the interior of the country.[51] EO outmatched the RUF forces in all operations. In just seven months, EO, with support from loyal SLA and the Kamajors battalions, recaptured the diamond mining districts....After the departure of Executive Outcomes, the credibility of the Kabbah government declined, ....The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) also condemned the AFRC coup, and ECOMOG forces demanded that the new junta return power peacefully to the Kabbah government or risk sanctions and increased military presence. [ECOMOG’s intervention in Sierra Leone brought the AFRC/RUF rebels to the negotiating table ....Unlike other previous neutral peacekeeping forces, UNAMSIL brought serious military power....British Royal Marines were deployed in Operation Palliser to evacuate foreign nationals and establish order.[83] They stabilized the situation, and were the catalyst for a ceasefire that helped end the war. The British forces, under the command of Brigadier David Richards, expanded their original mandate which was limited to evacuating commonwealth citizens
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So if interfering in one side of a civil war is a crime Taylor is hardly the only one who should be in the dock.

South African mercenaries, the IMF's own hired army, UN , assorted

No defence of Taylor but, if this "court" is meant to approximate a real court isn't there meant to be something about equality under the law? There is a pretty good case that a civil war on the other side of your border is a "threat to peace" justifying intervention but when did the IMF, Britain and South Africa develop such borders.

And haven't a number of European leaders said that international law doesn't apply to them and they have the right to intervene in any country they want (Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq, Syria), run their own terrorist organisations, bomb civilians, ethnically cleanse & worse whenever they want. Whatever one thinks of Taylor he isn't worse than that, or even as bad.

The mechanic and inventor has just converted the car ... to run on natural gas. He shakes his head.
"It's a no-brainer. We could jump-start the economy overnight, put 100,000 people to work -- easy -- and help the environment," says Mr. Mann, a former Volkswagen technician who's as comfortable talking about global energy solutions as he is around a socket wrench...

His big dream, though, is to create an affordable CNG home fueling station so that anyone who has access to a natural gas line for cooking or heating can also fill up a car, just as he and his wife do. Instead of paying $4 a gallon at the pump, it costs them 60 cents for the equivalent amount of natural gas.

"My wife loves it -- she's already saving $180 a month," he says. "What I don't understand is what we are doing sending billions of dollars overseas to buy oil when we've got a 100-year supply of natural gas right under our feet?"
Neither do many others. Natural gas has suddenly become almost everyone's favorite chassis for building an energy independent future. Many people on both sides of the drilling divide view the current abundance of the low-cost fuel as a "global game changer" -- an energy source that will help wean the United States off Mideast oil, alter the nation's foreign policy, spur jobs and boost the economy, and reduce greenhouse gases.

Others

There are more than 13 million natural gas vehicles on the road worldwide. Now companies and researchers are working on infrastructure and technologies to help bring the US's growing stock of natural gas to fuel tanks, including those of long-haul vehicles. --David Biello, Scientific American, 23 April 2012
From the UK to Argentina, from South Africa to Mexico, countries are waking up to the potential value of domestic shale gas reserves. Suddenly, a new wave of gas producers looks set to emerge that could threaten the old oligopoly. Instead of importing natural gas, the US is beginning to export it. The geopolitical fallout will stretch out over decades. “The world will never be the same again,” says Prof Stern. --Guy Chazan, Financial Times, 23 April 2012
There are an estimated 1.1 million taxis in China, 50% of which are already using natural gas engines. However, in the midst of China’s 112 million vehicles it doesn’t look like such a big splash. Whilst neither energy source has huge traction at the moment, natural gas seems to be the clear frontrunner in the race to convert the most vehicles. --Greener Ideal, 25 April 2012
Worldwide, the International Association for Natural Gas Vehicles (IANGV) puts the number of natural gas vehicles (NGVs) over 12.6 million. And globally, there are more than 18,000 natural gas fueling stations. In Asia, the average annual growth rate of NGVs has been 42 percent over the last 10 years. IANGV believes the global NGV fleet will increase at least 10-fold by 2020 – topping 50 million. --Investment U, 15 July 2012
Transportation may be the key frontier natural gas will have to conquer if it is going to dramatically change America's energy future. Traditionally, changing people's driving habits – convincing them of the virtues of alternative-fuel vehicles – is not an easy task. Just look at how many electric vehicles are on the road today, after years of promised "revolutions." Yet natural gas vehicles are catching on, particularly in the one area where alternative-fuel experimentation usually starts -- trucks and commercial fleets. Last year, almost 40 percent of the trash-hauling trucks and 25 percent of the transit buses purchased in the US were fueled by natural gas. --Alexandra Marks, The Christian Science Monitor, 23 April 2012

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Figures just out this morning show a 0.2% cut in GDP. Since we also had a drop 3 months ago that puts us in official recession, again.

More important is the fact that over the last few years we have never had any growth that wasn't within the margin of error of the figures.

While the world economy continues, year after year, growing at 5% & the bits outside the EU/US at 7% we keep bobbing along the bottom, sinking ever deeper into an economic backwater.

The Treasury is spinning

In defence, the Treasury will point to the bigger picture. The eurozone crisis has sapped confidence, deterring businesses from investing and costing growth and jobs.

The Treasury’s excuse is that the EU is heading into recession and it accounts for 40% of our exports, holding us back. Failing to mention that the rest of the world is growing at about 6% (excluding the US at 7%) and thus pushing us forward. Of course this seems not entirely compatible with 2 generations of politicos telling us how beneficial it is to be in the EU.
The fact is undeniable and indeed undenied – that we could be out of recession and into fast growth within days if the political class wished it & that every numerate politician knows this.

See my 28 point programme out of recession which, in various forms, has been around since we first went into recession. This has been seen by all the party leaders and there is no attempt to dispute, in any way whatsoever, that it will work. It fits well, particularly on the big items, with UKIP's programme Since the rest of the world is in fast growth with just a fraction of the programme it obviously would work.

Which is why it is obviously impossible for any politicians who are not personally wholly and completely corrupt to claim that they are trying to get out of recession - like Cameron and Clegg and any loyal members of the parties they rode in on.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

I just heard David Cameron explaining why he opposed a referendum on Lords reform while supporting referendums on London and other places having mayors. The mayoral referendums were because locally entrenched politicians were against them and a referendum was to get past them and find the people's wishes. Whereas for Lords reform the entrenched powers in all 3 parties are in favour of some cosmetic reform.

Mr Cameron appeared to be unaware that he was thus riding 2 horses in opposite directions. This commitment to democratic sovereignty, but not when it is your own entrenched interests, is typical of our political class.

Reforming the Lords is as major a constitutional change as we have seen since women got the vote.

If this is not something on which the people's wishes are to be made known Britain is not a democracy.

We should settle this by referendum.

But it should not be the sort of referendum we had on voting reform where the most popular option, true Proportional representation, was deliberately kept off the ballot because the Tories knew it would easily win.

We need a proper multi-option. run off. referendum under which we, the people, get to decide whether we want a fully elected PR chamber, or, as currently, a fully appointed one, some mixture of the 2 or something else. No decision from which the people are deliberately excluded will get any lasting respect and Parlimenmtarians are already not overly burdened with popular regard as it is.

The letter was published as written except for reformatting of the paragraphs and 2 words. I am keeping the Scotsman edition because i think the edited version the better one.

the greatest constitutional theorist of the day, AV Dicey, who described referendums as 'the best, if not the only possible, check upon ill-considered alterations in the fundamental institutions of the country'.

..... a difference, as Dicey put it, 'between laws which are not fundamental and constitutional and laws which are.'

I will later give my ideas for how to reform our second chamber. There is no chance of the Commons MPs alone producing this since what they want is the appearance of a second chamber able to keep some separation of powers but that the reality be that it all rests with them, or, since the Commons is fairly toothless, with their Downing Street master. This, in particular, is why they will oppose PR in the Lords. Though it would look like a reasonable compromise the inevitable result is that the Lords would acquire more democratic legitimacy than the Commons & thus actually have some power.

I suspect these prices don't entirely reflect reality, partly because some of them are several years old and some current, but also because, like China, they aren't actually measuring the price paid. In some cases, like Peru where the power isn't often available outside the capital city, or South Africa, with frequent blackouts, the official price may be the least of people's worries.

Even so there is a significant correlation between this and the GNP production $s Needed for each Kilowatt ($NEK). It is also amazing how widely these prices vary. Sometimes, as with Iceland, this is because of the natural resource base. But if Hong Kong, which has no natural resources, can produce electricity at half our price that is clearly the advantage of a free market not resources.

It also shows how much free trade in power would cut prices and stimulate the entire world economy (though particularly the bits with grossly overpriced power). There is no doubt that High Voltage DC (HVDC) cabling would make shipment of electricity worldwide much cheaper than for most commodities and that a HVDC world grid has been possible for some decades.

A former general and 30 other officers were detained Thursday for their roles in a 1997 coup, continuing the clash between the government and the nation’s once-indomitable military.

Long considered the untouchable guardian of a staunchly secular state, the Turkish military has lost its immunity since the pro-Islamic government took power and paved the way for a series of cases against current and retired officers.
Hundreds of people — from the former head of the army and other officers to academics and journalists — have been arrested and accused of plotting to overthrow the current government through an ultranationalist network known as Ergenekon

Were any of them planning a coup? Maybe, maybe not. There does not appear to be evidence but the Turkish military have, since Ataturk, had a role, enshrined in the constitution, to prevent a militantly Islamic government taking over, whatever the electorate say.

Now that is certainly undemocratic and we are now all in favour of "democracy" in the Islamic world, though this was not always the case. On the other hand we are not in favour of them democratically voting in an Islamic regime - which, from history, is unlikely to have any long term commitment to democracy and far less commitment to freedom than the military.

However, at least officially, we want Turkey in the EU and that requires it to be a full democracy, with as fully militantly Islamic a government as the people will vote for (while nonetheless being committed to free speech on the Armenian genocide, rights for gays and women and every other EU shibboleth.

On the 3rd hand Turkey is populous country with a growing population, an economy growing at around 7% annually, a history of occupying large parts of Europe and apart from Russia, is the only serious military competitor to the EU countries on the continent. Of course it is a member of NATO so that's ok. So far.
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Some good news. All the scares about antibiotics producing new strains of disease invulnerable to them seems, at least, greatly overblown.

Bacteria found deep inside a cave that has had scant exposure to the outside world for at least four million years share some of the same antibiotic-resisting traits that other bugs are supposed to have developed in response to modern medicines.
That’s the finding of a new research article, Antibiotic Resistance Is Prevalent in an Isolated Cave Microbiome, which plumbed the depths of Lechuguilla Cave, a 200-kilometre long cave in New Mexico, USA, to find bacteria populations that have had little or no exposure to the outside world.

Who would have thunk it?
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America's Zimmerman/Trayvon case. Reported here with the marginal amount of doubt, in America's media, that this really was a nasty white man shooting a black child excised from our coverage.
Googling Zimmerman Trayvon one finds a long list of the top 2 pictures, showing this large and larcenous youth as a much younger child and only this composite far down the list.
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Ok this is rather silly - checking LibDem blogs for some mention of them now being the 4th party I found this kite being flown about Zac Goldsmith, the very spume on the wave of ecofascism, being about to join UKIP. I comment

There is flying a kite and there is plain lunacy.
UKIP don't believe that we are experiencing catastrophic global warming; we don't want to cover the country in windmills; we do support cheap nuclear electricity; we do support the development of shale gas. Under what possible circumstances would Zac be welcome in UKIP?The subconscious subtext here may be that you recognise, with the LudDims now the 4th party, Zac, or anybody else, would not be so foolish as to consider joining you despite the fact that he shares your ecofascist hysteria

the other day on an LBC talk show. The producer had only booked me in for a ten-minute slot, in case the listeners weren't interested in my boring new book about that tediously hackneyed subject Man Made Global Warming. But the switchboards were jammed and the station ended up keeping me in for a full hour to reply to all the calls.
There was one big problem though: "We can hardly find ANYONE who disagrees with you," whispered the show's host, Julia Hartley-Brewer.

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And the econazi answer to losing the argument is this, via Forbes magazine - to threaten that

Every time someone validates or fine-tunes the science, ten or twelve well-funded and active propagandists

We know who the active denialists are – .... Let’s start keeping track of them now ....Let’s let their houses burn

There was a regime that did stuff like that and, assuming that Mr ForbesJews. Of course no more attempt is made to produce evidence for sceptic organisations being better funded because, while representing the very highest standard of honesty to which the econazis (or indeed Forbes) ever aspires it is a total and deliberate lie.

That is why it has been denounced by every single "environmentalist" who has more integrity and decency that the |Nazis who burned out the Jews. Every single member of the Green party, BBC, Holyrood or any econazi organisation who is not personally a subhuman thief and murderer with less humanity than a rabid dog. So far this includes not one single member of any of these groups.